Serenity’s Soul
February 16, 2010 (1:00 p.m.)
Dear Serenity’s Soul,
I was sitting here in my room about an hour ago when my mother came and sat down with me. She had a rather calm look on her face.
“I should tell you more.” She whispered to me as if she felt weary from the fear of remembering our past.
“If you can’t right now, Mom, I understand.”
“No, Sweety, I need to.”
She had to, so she took a deep breath and started down the troublesome road of memory lane.
“Your father became someone I simply could not recognize. I would often find him in a corner talking to himself, but he would say that he was talking to the little girl. He would ask me if I could see her and would become angry when I told him that I couldn’t. He felt so guilty that it all just consumed him. I wanted him to get help, Monica. He needed help, but he just wouldn’t cooperate. He started drinking to get the image of the little girl out of his mind, but drinking made him even more aggressive. He was mean. He was out of control. He was a man that neither one of us knew. He would come home very late at night, drunk, and would call me by other names that belonged to other women. I was devastated, and then one night…he actually just came home with another woman. She was shocked, of course, to find out that he had a family and just angrily left. I loved your father so much that I had convinced myself that this would just go away. I really believed that it would, but it didn’t. It just didn’t end. Finally, I just told him to leave. He went and stayed at this hotel, and then we started the process of getting a divorce. Neither one of us could take care of the restaurant, so we sold it and split the profit. After that, your father moved and was never seen again. I worked as a waitress, do you remember?”
I thought for a minute. “Yeah, I remember. I remember you working long hours.”
“Yeah. I tried to keep our house, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t keep anything. It all became so expensive, and so…so we lost it all and had to move into a small apartment. Even that felt hard, but I knew that you needed me, and so I kept going. Then, I don’t know, I lost track too. Alcohol just made my problems vanish for that moment, and I even started to know how your father felt about it. I got fired from my job because I was drunk, and I just let go and stopped caring about things because I felt I had no control over it anyway. I left you by yourself a lot. I didn’t support you. We lost everything and it was my fault. I failed, and I let you slip away and I turned to the wild ways of the streets. It was a hard life, and everyone has their own story. I want you to understand that everyone has a reason why, and everyone doesn’t end up on the street for the same reasons. Not every person that you see on the street is a bad person. Some people just had a hard fall. But, as for me, I can’t make excuses. The simple truth is that I gave up. I gave up on both of us. I am so sorry.”
I could tell that it took a lot out of her to tell me this, and I didn’t want to make it worse.
“Well, Mom, we have now. We have right now, and I am glad that we are on this journey together. I love you, Mama.”
She smiled. “I love you too, Baby.”
And then she gave me a kiss, and calmly left the room.
I remember the hard times. I remember the times when I felt so lonely, I felt my shadow was the only other existence in the world that I had, and it was only darkness.
I remember.
Hold on….there is a commotion. There is a knock on my door.
I have just told them to come in, and…………..and it is Francis, and………and Francis has just told me that…..
My brother has arrived.
My heart is pounding.
I will write you later,
Monica
